


the last thing that meant anything

by simplyprologue



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: F/M, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Season/Series 01, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-19
Updated: 2017-04-19
Packaged: 2018-10-20 18:27:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10668303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplyprologue/pseuds/simplyprologue
Summary: Everyone expects him to be fine. It’s the persona he’s spent decades carefully crafting for himself, the slick, calculating survivalist. His mother died, but it’s Marcus Kane, so of course he’s fine. Until he's not, and Abby is there to catch him.





	the last thing that meant anything

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** Originally written and posted at The100Kinkmeme on LJ. Outing myself as the author of this one. If you want to read it on the kinkmeme itself, [click here](http://100kinkmeme.livejournal.com/1753.html?thread=103897#t103897)! The prompt was: "Abby gives comfort to Kane after the explosion. (Season One)."

There are only so many times he can wrench his emotions onto an even keel. In the hour after the bomb explodes -- after his mother’s death -- he barely has a moment to breathe. It’s better that way. It’s the way it has to be.   
  
“Marcus?” Abby asks, sliding in front of him after he sends Brixton and Scott to secure the armory in Section 9, and it takes his eyes a moment to adjust to something besides the rota of guards he’s scheduled to report in appearing in his line of vision. “Let me look at you.”   
  
“I’m fine.”   
  
There’s too much to do. He’s standing, he’s fine.   
  
“Fine is a four letter word. Just… it’ll take me five minutes,” she says, voice dropping from a disgruntled murmur to a disquiet susurration. “We can’t stand to lose you too.”   
  
Lifting a hand, she presses her thumb against his temple, forcing him to look at her. Checking his pupils, ostensibly, or looking for other signs of trauma.   
  
“I can’t,” he snipes back, not quite shrugging her off but turning his head so that she’s no longer physically holding him to her gaze. Her face sets from an expression of concern to a grimmer visage, and with a pang of exasperation he realizes he feels obligated to offer her an explanation for his sudden coldness. “If I stop, if I sit down, then I’ll… then I’ll feel it.”   
  
The softness reappears, her hand dropping to his shoulder. “It’s okay. Marcus, your mother just died. No one expects you to just be fine.”   
  
Everyone expects him to be fine. It’s the persona he’s spent decades carefully crafting for himself, the slick, calculating survivalist. His mother died, but it’s Marcus Kane, so of course he’s fine. Is he even capable of love? He imagines if he surveyed the people who know him best, they’d wager no.   
  
He’s not even sure of the answer himself.   
  
But now he thinks it might be yes, or else this wouldn’t hurt so much.   
  
“No!” he half moans, half cries. “I have to be. I don’t have a choice. I have to be fine, or we miss that launch window, and we risk all of us dying. We risk those kids down there dying.” _Clarke,_ he thinks, beseeching her silently. _Think about Clarke._ If anyone is going to save them now, it’s her stubborn daughter. “We’ve all lost enough, Abby. You can’t lose your daughter, too. I _have_ to put you on the Exodus ship.”   
  
“And if you’re bleeding into your brain due to the concussive force of the blast, that won’t happen.” But Clarke Griffin comes by her stubbornness honestly, so Abby won’t give up. Her hand twitches towards the pocket of her coat, for her pen light. “Five minutes.”   
  
Sighing, he looks at the guards and personnel manning the Exodus ship. There are enough hands. Enough for him to be gone for _five_ minutes.   
  
“Fine.”   
  
He hands off his datapad to Denby with strict instructions to lock down the immediate area until he returns. She leads him to one of the storage units they’ve all but cleared out in preparation for the launch, pushing him to sit on a box with a gentle-but-firm touch. She pulls out the penlight, checking his pupils, muttering under her breath. Takes his vitals, looking at her watch. Holds his head in both her hands, checking for -- he’s not sure what, because if it was a laceration it’d be bleeding too much to be ignored. A bump, then. Or a fracture.   
  
And she’s so _close_. Abby smells like gunpowder and accelerant, like acrid electrical smoke and metallic blood and the tang of sweat. Marcus Kane is not a man who is starved for touch. He simply doesn’t need it.  
  
Except he does.  
  
Unconscious to themselves, they melt together. There’s no excuse but bone weariness and the instinct to cling to what’s safe. No excuse at all, when their mouths meet in gentle union, more an exchange of breath than a kiss. Her fingers trace the shape of his jaw, and his hands rise from his lap to her waist before he even considers that this might not be the smartest of ideas.

“What are you--?”   
  
He doesn’t pull back, not very far away. Far enough to see her eyes.   
  
“Does it even matter anymore?” she whispers, still stroking his jaw. There’s grief, and there’s anger in her, and a third thing that might be need if either was willing to class it as that. “Everything we were promised our lives would be turned out to be false. We almost died today. And you -- you--”   
  
Surging upwards, he kisses her again. This time open-mouthed, all lips and teeth and tongue, and he swallows her shocked little sound. Stepping into the opening of his legs, she wraps her arms around his neck. Just _five minutes._ They just need to steal five minutes from this chaos, take a little something for themselves. Five minutes of madness of their own making, if it’s a wet sloppy kiss or fucking each other through their clothes, or--   
  
There’s precious little time for negotiation.   
  
His hands cup her breasts, fingers curling into the low neckline of her shirt. _Is this okay?_ his touch asks, and his answer is Abby removing his jacket. Of course it’s okay, because nothing else is okay. The time they don’t have for negotiation is the same time they don’t have for removing clothes, and the heated skin of her back under his hands is enough, if only because it has to be.   
  
Marcus stands, and Abby pushes herself up onto her toes to keep them level as he finds the nearest wall to push her up against.   
  
Slotting their hips together, he rolls his hips into hers, feeling his erection hardening in his trousers and he dips his knees, fucking up into her the best he can while licking his tongue into her mouth. Her fingers tighten in his hair, and she changes the angle of their kiss, somehow finds a tighter fit. A minute passes and they’re both breathless, chasing the high of oxygen deprivation, rocking together. It’s entirely graceless, but there’s no reason to care. It’s a quick fuck, a reason to feel. Marcus hooks his hand under Abby’s knee, bringing it up behind his legs and his hips find a grind, his cock throbbing against her heat.   
  
But they want _more._   
  
Together they push her pants down, Abby struggling to kick off one leg over her boot as he drags her underwear down with his thumbs, bending to press a kiss to the curls at the top of her cunt.   
  
She hauls him back up, her face set in an expression of cast iron determination, opening his button and fly and without any preamble, reaches into his boxers to fist her hand around his dick. So he fits his hand between her legs, stroking her folds, finding her wet but not wet enough -- and palms her, pressing down on her mound and rubs the pads of his fingers over her clit. Her gasp vibrates through her body, and she collapses back against the wall. Fucking his fingers into her to the knuckle he watches her face, catching the shadows of arousal heightening, then curls his fingers inside of her. Drags them out slowly, then pushes them back in, fighting the suction of her body to _get her there._ It’s quick, a necessary prologue, and he watches as Abby’s face contorts and her mouth drops open into a tortured ring.   
  
For not the first time, he wants to kiss her. For the first time, he doesn’t wonder why, and just does it, considering his sanity forfeit.   
  
“Now,” she chants against his lips. “Now, now, now -- Marcus, now.”

She’s hot, and clinging to him, and it’s all wrong but it’s just what he needs. Just a little distraction, a quick fuck, a necessary release. Her leg hitches high on his hip and he drives into her with little coordination, wrapping his arms under her shoulders, burying his face into her neck. It can’t last. They’re both still sore, both still hurting. Shoving his hand between them he puts his thumb on her clit, rubbing tight circles until he feels her coming around him.  
  
Head falling back, Abby moans are filtered through her teeth, little lusty noises in his ear.   
  
He feels them all the way down his spine to his balls, and loses what little finesse he has. Pawing at her breasts like a teenager with one hand, bracing himself against the wall with the other, he feels the burn of orgasm building deep in his belly. His movements slam her against the metal plating, but she voices no complaint. So close. So, so, close, and almost mad for it.   
  
It eats him up like a piece of debris in atmo, and he shakes, release wringing him, leaving him limp.   
  
Panting, he leaves his face in the crook of Abby’s neck.   
  
Then, he realizes that he’s crying.   
  
Her fingers stroke through his hair, and she makes soft noises of comfort as his erection wanes and he slides out of her, feeling bereft. They’re past their five minutes, maybe closer to having claimed fifteen. Probably twenty, by the time they return. Neither is certain how long they stand there, leaning on each other.   
  
Vera Kane -- the woman who deserved to see Earth more than any of them -- was dead the moment the bomb went off.   
  
Can he love? The answer is yes, of course. Or else this wouldn't hurt so much.  
  
Or else he wouldn’t have tried to feel too much, rather than nothing at all.   
  
What happens next is this: she helps him dress, steadying him with her hands framing his face. He avoids her eyes, unused to the affection. It’s not romantic, not sexual -- this is Abby Griffin, whose husband he floated a year ago. She’s an ally of circumstance, a friend if she was feeling generous with who she considered friends. He helps her dress, and it’s awkward. Then they leave, returning to their posts.   
  
Hours later, he’s crawling through the inferno of the ventilation system on a faint hope that she might still be alive.  
  
Abby Griffin, the last person left alive who might make him feel anything at all.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
